A3BakerHoehlMeyers

A3BakerHoehlMeyers

To Do

• please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
• identify one focused topic within the chapter which is of greatest interest to your group!
• each group member: should identify one additional source relevant to the topic chosen!
• each group: provide a two page max summary statement in our course environment (mention the additional resources identified)
• prepare a short presentation to the class for the class meeting on Sept 17! the groups can choose how to present their results (oral only; use slides; one member, several members, or all members); time allocation (will be dependent of the numbers of groups: but somewhere between 4 and 10 minutes)

Form for your response

1. Herbert Simon

Chris Baker, Jeff Hoehl, Jane Meyers

2. Most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article?

Very nice work! Your sources and Shneiderman's ideas are put into relation and your argumentation is coherent and (for the most part -- see below) well supported by your references.

Online Trust and Relationships

In Leonardo's Laptop Ben Shneiderman discusses a framework of human relationships based on size, degrees of interdependence, shared knowledge, and trust. Shneiderman proposes four decreasingly personal circles of human interaction that he feels should drive technological innovation: Self, Family and Friends, Colleagues and Neighbors, and Citizens and Markets (Shneiderman, 2002). He suggests that software can be more beneficial if it is targeted or mindful of these four levels of relationships and the way in which they differ.Shneiderman posits that software to support collaboration and communication should be cognizant of the diminished trust and increased diversity amongst users in larger groups. Although the four circles of relationships adequately describe an initial state of online communication, it does not adequately describe the transformations that occur once communication and collaboration begins. As one interacts with others in the circles of relationships, the initial levels of trust and knowledge grow and dynamically change. As such, software must also be cognizant of these transformations which are not accounted for inShneiderman's model.

In order to accurately discuss how trust and relationships change as communication increases, it is first necessary to have a framework for understanding trust and how trust is formed online. Trust is commonly defined as the combination of benevolence, the want of the trustee to do good to the trustor, integrity, the trustee adhering to a set of principles held by the trustor, and ability, the skills and characteristics of the trustee to influence a specific domain (Zhang and Zhang, 2005). Once trustworthiness has been established, it can lead to trusted actions. In electronic commerce this manifests as the willingness to purchase products and in social context this is the willingness to divulge personal information (Zhang and Zhang, 2005). With a focus on interpersonal relationships, we can thus create a succinct working definition that trust is the confidence to divulge personal information without it being perceived to be misused or abused.

#bubblec('Since trust directly relates to the willingness of one to divulge personal information about his or her self', 'This is a fact? If so, please provide a source for it. I remember reading pretty recent studies about it and they gave the impression that this was a point of discussion.'), Shneiderman's basic premise that larger groups inherently have a lower level of trust is valid. However, his model fails to compensate for the fact that trust is an adaptive and dynamic trait. Trust amongst individuals as well as trust to large groups changes as a user interacts with an online system. Users are often motivated to trust according to the Social Exchange Theory. Users contribute to social systems with the expectation that future returns will be greater than their individual contribution (Zhang and Zhang, 2005). In fact, users are willing to contribute to online systems despite the fact that the Internet can pose higher risks than conventional communication. In their "Integrated Model of Online Trust",Zhang and Zhang note that trust in online systems is a two-staged event (Zhang and Zhang , 2005). The first phase, the initial stage, users have an initially low trust of others and generally use a system in an exploratory manner. The second phase, the committed stage, is one of robust trust and commitment. Not only do users trust others but they are willing to continually trust them in future communication. A user gains trust and moves between the two phases according to the Expectation-Confirmation Theory. As exploratory behaviors are reinforced with satisfactory results, a user begins to trust others more. If exploratory behaviors result in unsatisfactory results, a user begins to trust others less. This cycle repeats throughout a users online experience. Since trust is dynamic, beneficial software systems should not only be aware of various initial levels of trust and commonality, but should be aware of how those levels change over time.

An interesting experiment in how online relationships are formed is presented in (Bradner and Mark, 2002). Participants engaged in a remote video chat with a researcher, go through three different exercises designed to measure cooperation, persuasion, and deception. Half of the participants were told their remote partner was in the same city as them (Irvine, California), and half were told their remote partner was on the other side of the country in Boston, Massachusetts. We will call these the "near" and "far" scenarios. In all three exercises there was a marked difference in behavior of the participants depending on where they were told their remote partner was, even though in reality she was always in the adjacent room.

All three activities produced interesting results, but in the interest of space we will only talk about one, when participants played a form of the "prisoner's dilemma" game with their remote partner. Basically in this game the participant can choose to not trust their partner and be guaranteed a moderate reward, or the participant can choose to trust their partner which risks loosing the reward, if the partner betrays them, but also has the potential for a higher reward if their partner proves to be trustworthy. The findings show that in the "near" scenario participants' trust for their partner remained mostly constant throughout six rounds of the prisoner's dilemma game. However, in the "far" scenario trust was initially lower than with the "near" scenario, but rose with time and ended up being significantly higher than the "near" scenario by the end of the sixth round.

Shneiderman's circles of relationships can help shed some light on these results. Participants placed their remote partner into a different relationship circle depending on if they were perceived to be in the same city as them or not. Perhaps we could add an extra circle between "colleagues and neighbors" and "citizens and markets" and label it something like "co-habitant". Similar to the "citizens and markets" circle, co-habitants are people that one hasn't actually met. However there is still a loose bond that leads you to treat these people differently than those in the "citizens and markets" circle, as made clear by this experiment. However,Shneiderman's model does not help us understand how these relationships changed over the course of the experiment. Expectation-Confirmation Theory sheds some light here. As participants chose to cooperate with their partner and were not betrayed, they became more willing to trust their partner. An interesting question here is why trust in the "near" scenario did not follow this same trend, but instead remained mostly static throughout the experiment.

Because Ben Schneiderman's circles of human interaction map traditional offline relationships into the online world, it currently lacks the ability to model trust in relationships originating online with the intent of moving offline. Online environments fostering the creation and development of these relationships, such as dating (Match.com,eHarmony, etc.) and professional networking sites (LinkedIn), facilitate the emergence of a new phenomena known as hyperpersonal communication (Gibbs, 2006). Hyperpersonal communication can be defined as the prevalence of individuals to very quickly, and openly discuss deeply personal issues in computer mediated communication,CMC, environments which they would typically not divulge in face-to-face, FTF, scenarios (Henderson, 2004). Henderson and her colleagues found that individuals in these communication environments exploit the asynchronous nature of their interaction by reflecting, self-censoring, and taking advantage of disclosing personal information which may, for whatever reason, be uncomfortable to discuss FTF . These exchanges were also facilitated by the general anonymity and safety an individual feels when discussing such matters at a distance. It is not surprising however that the divulgance of personal information by one participant is often reciprocated by the disclosure of mutually sensitive information by the other. This back-and-forth exchange is a central ingredient in the creation of an intimate, trusting, online relationship (Henderson, 2004).

"#bubblec("Because he had said so much to me about what was going on in his life, I felt like he could be someone that I could trust with what was going on in mine. Id like to think this had nothing to do with feeling obliged to reciprocate but maybe it did. You tell me something, and Ill tell you something", "This is a looong quote and doesnt seem to have any direct connection to the surrounding paragraphs (except for the reference). If you use direct quotes, especially long ones, comment on them, put them in relation to what you are writing.")" (Henderson, 2004)

It is important to recognize that not all individuals are committed to truthfully representing themselves online, and often users create idealized personas which accentuate their positive features while ignoring less impressive ones. Surprising, researchers have found that individuals whose long-term goal is the creation of FTF relationships will often divulge a larger amount of truthful information (Gibbs, 2006). An interesting question for future research is how online trust differs from offline trust, and how these trusts sustain and change in the opposing environment.

3. articulate what you did not understand in the article but it sounded interesting and you would like to know more about it

Bradner, E., and Mark, G. (2002). Why Distance Matters: Effects on Cooperation, Persuasion and Deception. In Proceedings of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, New Orleans, Louisiana. (Chris Baker)

Gibbs, Jennifer L., Ellison, Nicole B., Heino, Rebecca D. (2006) Self-Presentation in Online Personals: The Role of Anticipated Future Interaction, Self-Disclosure, and Perceived Success in Internet Dating. Communication Research, April 2006; vol. 33" pp 152 - 177. (Jane Meyers)

Henderson, S., & Gilding, M. (2004). 'I've never clicked this much with anyone in my life:' Trust and hyperpersonal communication in online friendships. New Media & Society, 6(4), 487-506. (Jane Meyers)

Shneiderman, B. (2002) Leonardo's Laptop - Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Zhang, X., and Zhang, Q. (2005). Online Trust Forming Mechanism: Approaches and An Integrated Model. In Proceedings of ICEC 2005, ACM Press, 201-209. (Jeff Hoehl)